Naspers invests in Bitcoin start-up

Naspers is leading a US$4m (about R50m) funding round in Bitcoin start-up BitX. The investment is being made through Naspers payments subsidiary PayU, with BitX’s existing investor, Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group, also participating in the round.

The Singapore-based BitX, which has offices in South Africa, is used by people worldwide for money transfers, online buying and trading and storing the Bitcoin cryptocurrency.

“The business has grown rapidly over the past 12 months and now has the largest emerging market footprint of any cryptocurrency company,” BitX said in a statement.

It plays in markets across Southeast Asia and Africa. Key markets are South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore.

“We’ve been seeing very strong growth across the markets we operate in and this investment will allow us to both accelerate this growth and extend our footprint to more markets”, said BitX co-founder and CEO Marcus Swanepoel.

“In Naspers we have a truly global partner with unrivalled capabilities in high-growth markets, and we’re very excited to work together in building out our global platform,” he said.

The new funding round “represents a significant capital injection to help expand our business”, he added.